"...Kay Burningham’s painstaking studies unfolded for her, and now her readers, the details of a grotesque fraud of cosmic proportions masquerading under a charitable façade of public spirited nobility. In her book, Kay demonstrates for the world to see, how a reasonable application of the law should be applied to the “affinity fraud” of Mormonism, whose very continued existence employs the quiet acquiescence of government officials and judicial officers whose canons of ethics demand of them a higher standard than to allow this fraud to continue unchecked.

An American Fraud: One Lawyer’s Case against Mormonism, is, ..., an historically significant work that calls out the most insidious fraud of American culture for what it is. It is a timeless masterpiece, and will be associated with the beginning of the end of Mormonism in years to come.

In recent years, the Mormon Utah paper’s outright attempts at censorship have been outrageous. In 2010, a piece in their ‘Church section,’ (no specific author was credited) advised LDSChurch members to refrain from searching outside sources for their Sunday school lesson materials. “Use proper sources,” depicteda mother-daughter scene where mother is struggling to prepare a Church lesson, books strewn across her table.[1] Daughter asks her mother why she doesn’t just teach from the LDSChurch manual."Why," she asks, "are you trying to boil down information?An inspired Church-writing committee has already done that for you." Mom, apparently a little dense in this scenario, looks confused.Daughter goes on to explain that all she needs to teach is in the approved manual which has been ‘correlated’ by the Brethren “…to ensure purity of doctrine, simplicity of materials, and control by the priesthood.”Mother’s concern disappears from her brow.She is relieved that the work has been done for her and she closes her books, shuts down her internet browser and returns from her brief, thinking escape, to the land of the unquestioning.[2]

This newspaper has been the media organ for the mainstream Mormon Church in the State of Utah for more than a century and a half.In the early Twentieth Century, one-time U.S. senator Frank Jenne Cannon, son of late 19th century LDS leader George Q., acknowledged its perverse power when he wrote that [the Deseret Evening News is] “…one of the most dishonest, unjust and mendacious organs that ever poisoned the public mind.”[3]Additionally, the authors of The Mormon Corporate Empire noted: “The Deseret News is not held in high esteem by its counterparts.”During the investigation for their book, they “…encountered some very unflattering descriptions of it by other newspaper publishers in Utah and surrounding states.” [4]

Almost a century ago, the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, put it aptly when he wrote:“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.”[5] Mormonism, from its very inception, is a good example of propaganda in practice.As economist Frank Knight acknowledged, a theocracy is more effective than a purely secular autocracy because in the former style of government, “the victims may not feel coerced at all.” [6]Propaganda is alive and well in Utah.